Climate Variability, Migration and Intergenerational Transfers

Research Theme: Consequences of Migration in Sending and Receiving Areas

Location: United Mexican States

Funding: NICHD

This project examines the ways in which climate variability influences human behavior, focusing on migration and resource-sharing within families. In this project, VanWey studies how risk affects migrant transfers in Mexico. This contributes to her larger work looking at how migrant transfers can be used not only to increase the financial well-being of sending households, but to transform the nature of local social institutions, leading to new schools and the protection of natural resources. She hypothesizes that short-term rainfall shocks will have quite different effects on migration and transfers, and thus social institutions, than will longer term deficits in rainfall.